Captured Taliban motorbike features in Imperial War Museum exhibition

A newly acquired Honda motorbike, captured from Taliban insurgents by members of 1st Battalion The Rifles during their tour of Afghanistan last year, has gone on display at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Visitors to the Imperial War Museum London viewing the Honda motorbike captured from Taliban insurgents. Picture: Copyright IWM 2012

The motorbike forms part of the interactive display ‘War Story: Serving in Afghanistan‘ (which will run up to 18 December 2012) where visitors can delve into the world of Armed Forces personnel serving on Operation HERRICK.

The exhibition includes troops’ personal artefacts, videos and photographs which provide first-hand accounts of their everyday life on the ground and reflections on loss and coming home.

The motorbike is a sort of symbol of freedom in the west, but this becomes a very different and poignant symbol when it is utilized as a tool of warfare. Looking at this harmless motorbike from an exhibitional perspective is arguably more thought provoking than looking at say, a tank, as it may lead you to think more about the enemy we are fighting as the taliban do not have armoured vehicles and fight with a very limited array of light to medium weapons. They either adapt vehicles to mount machine guns on, or use ordinary cars and motorbikes. The exhibit is meant to bring us, the visitor, to a world of very unconvetional warfare and to make us stop and think about all this and so much more.